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Then she saw a flicker of emotion in his eyes. Something so fierce that she almost backed away.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘If I’d known …’ Again Sophie saw that shadow of turbulent emotion in his gaze and trembled at the force of it. ‘If I’d known,’ he continued, ‘I would not have intruded on you today.’
‘You wouldn’t have been welcome at any time,’ she said bluntly.
He had a nerve, offering her condolences, now when it didn’t matter. It was too little and far, far too late.
‘Pardon?’ His wide brow pleated in a frown just as if he hadn’t understood exactly what she’d said.
‘I don’t want your apologies,’ she said. ‘I don’t want anything from you.’
‘I understand that you are grieving. I—’
‘You understand nothing,’ she snarled. ‘You with your superior air and your apologies. You make me sick.’ She gulped down a raw breath. ‘I want you out of my house and I never want to see you again.’
Silence gathered as he returned her gaze, his brows drawing together in a straight, disapproving line.
‘If I could, I would leave now as you wish. But,’ the word fell heavily between them, ‘I cannot. I come here on a matter of great importance. A family matter.’
‘A family matter?’ Her voice rose and broke. How could he be so callous? ‘I have no family.’ No siblings. No father. And now her mother.
‘Of course you have a family.’ He stepped close. So close that his warmth insinuated itself into her chilled body, sending tendrils of heat skirling through her. The invasion of her space was strangely shocking.
But she didn’t move away. This was her home, her territory. No way was she backing down. ‘You have a family in Greece.’
She stared into his grim face. A family in Greece. For how many years had she heard that? The stubborn mantra of her mother, a woman who’d had to make her life in a new country, far from home. A woman who had refused to be cowed, even by her own father’s rejection.
The irony of it. Sophie’s mouth twisted in a lopsided grimace at the unbelievable timing. Her mum had waited a quarter of a century to hear those words confirmed. Now, just days after her death, they were being offered to Sophie like a talisman to keep her safe.
‘Stop it!’ he barked, his hands closing around her shoulders, digging into her flesh.
Sophie jumped, startled out of the beginnings of hysterical laughter. She felt branded by his touch, contaminated. She shrugged, tried to shove his hands off her. Finally he let her go.
‘I have no family,’ she repeated, staring into his furious gaze.
‘You are upset,’ he countered as if explaining away her emotions. ‘But you have a grandfather and—’
‘How dare you?’ she snapped. ‘How can you have the gall to mention him in this house?’ Her heart raced so fast she thought it might burst right out of her ribcage. Again she felt the white-h
ot rage, that savage need to lash out in fury and smash something.
She’d got through the past few days only by refusing to dwell on what she couldn’t change, by telling herself that it didn’t matter. It was all over now anyway. Old history. No one, not even the cruel patriarch of the Liakos family, had the ability to hurt her mother any more.
And now this family henchman appeared on the scene and dredged it all up again. All the pain and the lacerated hope. The regret and the smouldering hate.
She trembled. But not with weakness this time.
‘Do you think there’s any place in my life for a man who completely disowned his daughter?’ she hissed. ‘Who ignored her year after year? Pretended she didn’t exist?’
Sophie’s chest ached with the force of her hurt, with the gasping breaths she inhaled. Her hands shook with a palsy of repressed fury.
‘Who didn’t even have enough compassion to contact her when she was dying?’ The accusation echoed between them, ebbing away into a silence thick with challenge and pain.
She stared into a face devoid of all emotion. Yet he couldn’t conceal the flicker of surprise in his eyes. So this was news to him. And not welcome news, judging by the way his brows drew together.
‘Nevertheless, we must talk.’ He raised a peremptory hand as she opened her mouth to speak. ‘I am not your grandfather’s emissary. I don’t come on his business, but my own.’
Sophie shook her head, confusion clouding her tired brain. His business? It didn’t seem likely. Should she believe him or was this some ploy?
